


Still Water

by deslea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-11 21:55:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7072000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deslea/pseuds/deslea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellatrix and Rodolphus are home from Azkaban, and reunited with their Master. Neither their marriage nor the Dark Lord is the same, but that isn't a bad thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Water

The bathroom was an assault on Bella's senses.

It wasn't only the opulence - the glass, the tiled mosaics on the floor, the copper. It wasn't only the luxurious thick towels hanging from claw-shaped hooks. It wasn't only the single drop of exquisitely clean water clinging to the faucet, although that drop of water captured her gaze for long, entrancing moments.

More than anything, it was the _light_. Four burning torches burned on the walls to illuminate the room, and they reflected off gleaming marble and mirrors, in an explosion of yellow and gold, bright as a summer's day. She hadn't seen light this bright in fourteen years. 

Come to think of it, she hadn't seen _yellow_ in fourteen years. 

Circe.

It wasn't a bathroom she remembered from any of her stays at Malfoy Manor, and at first she thought that Lucius and Narcissa had simply renovated in her absence. But then her gaze was drawn to a large, round fixture, like the spout on a gardener's watering can, poised high above the bath.

Rodolphus followed her gaze.

"It's a shower," he said. "It's a Muggle thing, mostly. It requires consistent power to maintain the water pressure, so it isn't very practical for us. But the Dark Lord thought it would be better for now. The elves are powering it somehow. I didn't ask how."

Bella's gaze fell, from the spout protruding from the ceiling to the drain in the empty bath. The picture formed in her mind of a waterfall, and then she understood. If they soaked in still water, it would be putrid in seconds. They were filthy, both of them, with fourteen years of Azkaban's grime. It was beneath their nails, and in the soles of their feet, and in the lines of their faces. This thing, this shower, would take the dirt away as quickly as it washed off.

"He was right," she agreed. She glanced at Rodolphus sidelong. "How is he?"

"His body was destroyed and rebuilt. Physically, he isn't at all what we remember. You should probably brace yourself. You know, not to react."

"Well, I suppose that's true of all of us." Automatically, she ran her tongue over her ruined teeth, feeling a familiar, dull pang. She had been beautiful once.

"He's still very much himself in other ways. That's why he didn't ask to see you as well. He was most insistent that he see you at your best."

"He would," she said, a knowing smile curling around her lips. Clearly, Rodolphus thought she must be nursing hurt over that. He knew her well, but he could still fail to understand her sometimes, even now. 

Not in a million years would the Dark Lord want to see her frail and broken. He could barely tolerate the fact that she was even _mortal_. To see her like this would be more than he could stand. 

"We should get cleaned up," Rodolphus said. He went to the bath and turned on the shower, and removed his coarse prison shift as the water began to steam. He did it unselfconsciously. "Are you coming?"

"In a minute," she said. "Go ahead." 

"Suit yourself," he said, and stepped in. 

Bella watched him thoughtfully. 

They had started their marriage as rather awkward acquaintances, she reflected, and hadn't progressed much further in their first decade together. Sex was infrequent and dutiful, and supplemented by more enjoyable unions on both sides. During their life together before prison, she had never seen him like this, naked in the light. Would never have contemplated the casual intimacy of cleaning herself alongside him.

But Azkaban had changed that. It had cleaved them together where their carefully-negotiated nuptials could not. They had an ease with one another now, an intimacy born of enforced proximity and companionship. They were not a couple, exactly, but they _were_ a team. There was love between them now. They were family. An odd little family, but family just the same.

"What?" he wondered, cocking an eyebrow at her.

"Nothing," she said. "Just thinking." She stepped forward, pulling her prison shift over her head. She shrugged a little, sliding her gaze away from him, and admitted diffidently, "I was thinking we make a good team."

His eyebrow arched higher, and his mouth broadened into a mocking grin. "Oh, _Bella,_ " he reproved.

"Oh, shut up," she snapped peevishly. She was grinning too, though. She couldn't help it.

"That's more like it. Get in here," he said easily, holding out his hand. "I think all that dirt is going to your head."

"Don't get used to it," she warned, letting him haul her in. "I'll most likely go back to hexing you in the morning."

"I wouldn't have it any other way. Turn around," he added.

She did, and she let him tend to her, sinking back her head under the spray. Waited patiently as he used shampoos and lotions and charms on her matted hair. Waited as the knots slowly untangled themselves under his spellwork. Gingerly, she cleaned her face with her fingertips, easing them over the lines of her skin. The shampoo washed down her body, swirling around her feet and down the drain, taking Azkaban with it.

He came around her and ran soapy hands over her shoulders, her breastbone, his brow puckered as he cleaned her. It was an intimate gesture, but a chaste one. He had never been a particularly sexually-driven man, at least not with her. Bella thought that if anything, he was driven by the need to take care of someone, and somewhere along the line, that someone had become her. 

She didn't take care of him in kind. It didn't come naturally to her. It never had. But she could let him take care of her, and love him for it, and for Rodolphus, that seemed to be enough.

"I do love you, you know," he said presently.

"Same," she murmured.

He ran his hands down her arms and soaped her hands, sliding his fingers into the spaces between hers. "I won't make you choose, but _he_ might."

"Yes, he might."

"Well, so be it," he said. "Being lovers was never really the heart of it."

"No," she agreed. It had been comfort, more than anything. It had mattered in Azkaban, and she felt a pang at the prospect of losing it, but only a pang.

He began to pull away.

"Rod," she said, catching his hand with hers. 

He came back, and compulsively, she slid her arms around his shoulders. Drawing him against her, skin to skin, bodies pressed together. Not like lovers. Like twins in the womb.

"I'm glad you were with me," she said. 

His arms tightened around her, and he pulled back a little, closing his lips softly on hers.

"Same," he murmured, and then, gently, he pulled away, and he left her there.

  
  


* * *

  
  


"Bella," the Dark Lord murmured.

Bella drew herself up and offered her hand. He took it, and kissed it. 

It was, she supposed, a parody of the courtly rituals they had taken for granted so long ago as young, beautiful doyens of society. Now, she was a ruined thing under a thin veneer of grooming and fine clothes, and so was he. But it was the only way he knew to relate to her, or she to him.

"You're looking very well, my dear," he said.

She wasn't, but she accepted it in the spirit in which it was given. "As are you, my Lord." And he was, for someone who had been blown to bits.

"Come, then. Dance with me." He motioned her to enter his suite, and with a flick of his fingers, a slow waltz began to play on the gramophone.

"Of course, my Lord." This was part of the courtly ritual between them. 

She stepped neatly into his waiting arms. His stance was the same, his posture, but some things were different. The way he pressed her against him was different. He had less muscle; he needed to use the pressure of his bones. It was not unpleasant, but it took a few moments for her to settle into him again.

He watched her, and nodded approvingly as she fell into rhythm with him. He made a small sound of concession. "The years have taken their toll," he said conversationally, as though he merely moved a shade slower due to an arthritic knee.

"On us all," she agreed, "but we persevere, do we not?"

"We do indeed," he said approvingly. "I must know all about the years since I saw you last. May I?"

"Of course," she said. This, too, was part of the ritual, but in view of the years they had been apart, it held more meaning now.

 _"Legilimens,"_ he murmured, still moving slowly with her, and docilely, she let him move her around the room as he moved around her mind.

She let him search her memories at will, let him find the things she would have struggled to put into words. Things about endurance and will, things about patience, and things about Rodolphus, too. She hid nothing, made no effort to put anything into context. There was no need for that. Not with him. She thought sometimes that was the thing she loved most of all about him. That he could understand her even when she didn't have the words to understand herself.

After a long time had passed, he emerged from her mind. His brow was furrowed with concentration.

"It pleases me, that you and Rodolphus have reached an accord, Bella. It's right that he should be a friend and helper to you."

"Thank you, my Lord."

Thoughtfully, he raised his fingers to her breastbone, and laid them there, tracing chastely over her flesh, as Rodolphus had done when he washed her. He murmured, "I'm glad he takes care of you."

 _I'm glad he takes care of you, because I can't,_ her mind supplied before she could stop it.

He heard the thought in the remnant of their connection, and his mouth flickered into a sideways grin. "No," he admitted, and the fact that he could admit it told her that he had changed, right along with her and Rodolphus. "It isn't in my nature, perhaps." 

His nature was the same, she thought, but his awareness of it was new. Or perhaps just his willingness to tell her about it.

"Show me," she said. Just that. He frowned for a moment, but then, he nodded, and then images and impressions exploded in her mind. 

His near-annihilation, and the struggle that followed. His boundless, relentless will to live, to find a way. To find a way _back._ Years alone with his own mind, with no other input to sustain him. He'd reflected and re-reflected on himself, his life, his nature, until it was like eating himself alive. And then, finally, rebuilding himself, cell upon cell, bone upon bone, skin upon muscle. To her, his body before her seemed like a work of art, the work of a great creator. That he was still _himself_ seemed a miracle.

At this thought from her, his self-assuredness seemed to falter, and he let her glimpse something, some fear, perhaps. Deep down, perhaps he had not been sure she would love what he had become. Whatever it was, it propelled him against her, his mouth heavy and demanding on hers. As fervent and hungry as Rodolphus had been chaste.

"My Lord," she whispered, pressing herself against him. She shivered there, as though she could get even closer if she just twisted and writhed her body enough. "Please."

His arms tightened around her. "Yes," he said, between burning kisses. "Yes."

She had missed this, this fire. The way he scorched her with his power and his demands. The insistence of his body, slow and deep and relentless, pushing her to take and take and _take_ him. Pushing her limits, she, who had nearly none. Working her until she was spent, until every shred of tension in her body was purged on him. Until that tightly-contained spring that lived inside her was completely unwound. Falling to rest with him, gasping and undone, was like being a phoenix with him, rising from ashes of herself anew.

And now, she thought, that was true of them both.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Rodolphus stirred when she slipped into bed beside him.

Her body ached, a good ache. The ache of a fire purged. She sank gratefully into the bed beside him.

If the Dark Lord was fire for her, she thought, Rodolphus was the still waters of rest. It comforted her to have him there, sharing her space, sharing her rest. He filled a void in her that she had never even known was there, simply by existing side-by-side with her.

"He didn't make me choose," she said presently.

"That's good," he murmured. "You shouldn't have to."

He curled his body behind hers, and she thought perhaps he would try to have her then, a reclaiming of her. A different man would have. The Dark Lord certainly would have. 

She was already spent, but she would have allowed it, if he needed it. 

He didn't. He kissed her shoulder and fell still.

She groped for his hand on her belly, and found it. He squeezed it.

They slept.

END


End file.
